It was May in the spring of my junior year of high school. I had just received my ACT score and I had gotten two points over what I had wanted and my grades were exactly what they needed to be. It seemed like a typical day. I sat in my English class preparing my notes for my graded discussion the next week on Ken Kesey’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”
Then I began to feel this stiffness in my back and it slowly escalated throughout my body. Before I knew it I felt like I had broken all the bones in my body. I went to my teacher and asked to leave and quickly called my dad to come pick me up from school — a bit unusual since I usually drove myself to and from school.
When I got home, I ran straight to the toilet and just laid down in front of it. As time went by, my heart started beating faster and faster, to the point I was convinced I was having a heart attack. So I called my mom from my cell phone who was in the next room and had her drive me to the hospital.
The odd thing was, as soon as I got to the hospital the pain started to go away. Between the walk from the car to the waiting room, the pain had completely stopped. My mom asked if I wanted to go home, but since we were already at the hospital I asked to see a physician.
After describing my symptoms and the situation the doctor told me that I had just suffered from a panic attack, a foreign word to me then but too familiar now. She said to go home and try to relax for a few days, and I did.
A few days later the pain came back. So we rushed to the hospital again and instead of sending me home empty handed the physician sent me home with a prescription for medication, one that would help prevent panic.
Those two weeks waiting for the medicine to kick in were the longest and hardest two weeks of my life. However, once you are at the bottom of the mountain there is nowhere else to go but up, so I began climbing again. This time, I took more advantage of my tools to help me like my friends and family and a little medication. Thanks to them I began climbing again and began to feel myself. While it is an uphill battle and sometimes seems too hard to handle, I know that with the help and support of the people around me, I can do anything.
So everyone who either has or knows someone who struggles with anxiety, remember, it’s OK. Although it gets hard at times it will always get better. Life doesn’t put you in situations you aren’t equipped to handle.
If you ever need someone to talk to and give you a pep talk and tell you it’s OK, please contact me. (My contact information is in my profile.)
